


Just Tonks

by zorilleerrant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Nonbinary Tonks, Other, Queer Remus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 05:49:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14158146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: Tonks is the only metamorphmagus in Europe. Remus apparently didn't know.





	Just Tonks

“Oh, good, you’re here,” the man says, pulling off his scarf and shaking the snow out of it, thankfully onto the doorstep and not actually into Remus’s apartment.

Remus stares for a moment, then returns to packing his bag, phrasing and rephrasing in his mind the most polite rebuff he can muster, because as much as he would like to just stay inside, where he’s managed to charm the fire to just the right temperature, and can have more than two shots of firewhisky without encountering Molly’s judgmental stares, and with the invitation any minute now to curl up around another warm body and, who knows, TJ always has a new book up his sleeve even if he’s not up for more than that, what with the cold outside and – it doesn’t matter, though. The Order needs him, and he rather thinks fighting a Dark Lord is more important than a nice night in.

Only TJ tucks his scarf back inside his coat, and waits for Remus to button his coat, and apparates the both of them to Grimmauld Place, whereupon he grimaces and shifts back into the form Remus should’ve been most used to seeing, _if Tonks had ever told him_.

He stares at her in shock for a minute, trying to hold her up against the graceful aspiring guitarist that bought him a drink and flirted his way up to Remus’s apartment in two dates, which was mostly only so slow because he was a little young for Remus, and honestly, Remus knew he was young, but not _that_ young, and he maybe feels a little sick with himself.

“Excuse me,” he says, and sometime thereafter finds himself in a library, wondering what on god’s green earth is happening.

He picks up a book, because that’s the most likely thing to answer that sort of question.

“Remus?” says a voice, and Remus turns to find a young woman, with purple and green striped hair and a matching floral print top, frowning at him.

He stares for a moment. “What do I call you?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” she says. “Tonks is fine.”

He stares harder. “Why TJ?”

“You like me looking that way,” she says. “It doesn’t bother me. A lot of people prefer it when I’m consistent, and one’s as good as any. I thought you knew.”

“No,” he says, although maybe she’s getting more to the heart of the matter than he’s really willing to question, one story and no more than fifteen minutes away from her mother, “why call yourself TJ? Why have me call you that?”

“They all have names,” she says, waving a hand at herself, “all the ones I use regularly. That’s just what that face is called.”

“Why?” Remus asks, unsure whether he really does mean something deeper this time.

“It’s sort of a joke,” Tonks says. “With some of my old mates. From Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” Remus agrees.

“Tonks Just Tonks,” she says, “TJ Tonks, you see?”

“Right,” Remus says.

“Anyway,” Tonks adds, “we shouldn’t have this out now. Mum’ll be up any minute. We can talk later, right?”

“Should get down for supper, yes,” Remus says.

“Remus,” Tonks says. “Tell me we can talk later.”

“We can talk many times, Tonks,” Remus says. “I’m just not sure it’ll do any good.”

 

“Why?” Remus says, again, long after everyone else has gone to bed, not even bothering to look up at the figure waiting at the door.

“I thought you knew,” he repeats.

Remus sighs, appraising TJ, the familiar ripped jeans and ribbed sweater, a little too baggy over a button-down shirt just crisp enough to let you know the artist wasn’t quite as starving as he liked to look. Remus found it funny, in an endearing sort of way. Now it just seems childish, like Tonks is playing at things she doesn’t know enough about to mock.

“Can you not look like him while we do this?” Remus asks.

Tonks gives a curt nod, and changes, taller and leaner than her…brother, Remus supposes…with plain features, but wide, expressive eyes, with the same self-confident grace of movement. “Better?” she asks.

“What do you call this one?” Remus murmurs into his snifter.

“Donna,” she says, “although, again. Tonks. It’s always Tonks. That’s why I use it.”

“Why’d you do it?” Remus asks.

“Do what?” Tonks says, and there’s more challenge on that face than usual.

“Look like him,” Remus grits out.

Tonks shrugs. “Back in school, you know, we’d like to buy a bottle of the nicer stuff than we could sneak, every now and then, and maybe we needed a trustworthy looking adult to purchase it for us. It was always easiest for me, obviously.”

“You don’t need adults to buy liquor for you anymore,” Remus says.

Tonks tilts her head. “No, but have you tried being a woman playing for tips? Being a woman in that sort of bar, for that matter?”

“You’re an Auror,” Remus snaps, “don’t tell me you can’t hold your own.”

“If they don’t _know_ they still _harass me_ ,” Tonks says, sliding back into the old face, the one Remus might’ve been falling in love with, “why do you act like _this face_ is some trick I played on you?”

“Maybe,” Remus says, “I wanted to get to know the real you.”

“Maybe,” Tonks growls, shifting into a smaller form, and changing into dress robes with a flick of her wand, “you don’t know the first thing about what makes a person _real_. Is this my real face? Or maybe this one?”

Remus watches her change, again and again, finally back to TJ, and then, with an apologetic glance at him, Donna.

“Which is really me?” she asks.

Remus tilts his head, wondering if it’s a trick question. “The real you. What you looked like earlier – well, without the pig nose, and with your hair back to normal. Nymphadora.”

Tonks laughs, a full belly laugh. “That one? I never look like her if I can help it. It’s not like metamorphmagi have a _natural_ form – that’s one I designed as a kid, so I’d look enough like a Black to remind mum of home, but not enough to remind her of _them_. So I’d look enough like dad that he wouldn’t feel left out, but not enough to make him think I took after him, because he worried about me. He wanted me to have magic. Also, he’s a little self-conscious. But it was never _me_ in any real sense; just the face I wear when I have to. Because they expect it.”

“So, which is really you, then?” Remus asks.

“They all are, Remus, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Tonks says. “There’s about a dozen I use regularly, more that I don’t use that much anymore.”

“A dozen,” he repeats. “You’re a dozen people on a regular basis.”

“A dozen faces, at least.” She shrugs. “My go-tos are TJ, Donna, Marjoram, and Puck, these days.”

“Oh,” Remus says. Then he offers her a drink.

 

“Does it bother you?” Remus asks, running his hand through the hair on his lover’s chest.

Tonks laughs. “I wouldn’t do it if it bothered me, lover.”

Remus traces his gaze across muscular arms, pulling Tonks in for a kiss once he catches his breath. “That I want you to look like this, every time.”

Tonks laughs as he ruffles Remus’s hair. “I hardly look exactly the same every time, Remus. And it’s hardly up to me what you like in the bodies you like.”

“Would you like to be a woman, sometimes, when we make love?” Remus asks.

Tonks laughs again. “And why do you assume I’m never a woman when we do?”

Remus frowns.

“You’re looking at this from completely the wrong direction, Remus,” Tonks says, “you’re trying to find which body is the real me, again.”

Remus sighs. “Alright I suppose this – is the real you not a woman, then?”

“Yes and no,” Tonks says, “a man and a woman both, and neither, all at once, not quite the same always, but it never really changes, either. Does that answer your question?”

“It does not,” Remus says.

Tonks kisses him again. “Puck is more a woman than not, and I wear his face when I’m in that mood. Donna’s for the most part a man, but not just. And Hyacinth happens to be nothing at all, and I remember you fucking _them_ just fine.”

“Tonks!” Remus says.

He laughs. “If I can’t be vulgar in bed, where can I be?”

“I wouldn’t want you to feel unfulfilled, that’s all,” Remus says.

“Yes,” Tonks agrees. “I’m terribly unfulfilled because I can’t have tits in bed. Let alone mine, I’m pining for someone else’s, but alas, I have you, and you alone.”

“Well, there’s no need to be like _that_ ,” Remus says. “Fine, then, I shan’t bring it up again, and if you do have a problem, you’ll have to fix it on your own, then, won’t you?”

“Oh, _no_ , however shall I live,” Tonks says, nipping at Remus’s earlobe.

“Can you get pregnant?” Remus asks.

“I bloody well hope so, I’d hate to be the last metamorphmagus,” Tonks says.

“No,” Remus says, “I mean when you’re – well, like that.”

“I’ve been using protection charms, anyway,” Tonks says.

“I know,” Remus tells him, “I was just – the last metamorphmagus?”

“Of course,” Tonks says, tilting his head.

“You can’t be the only one in the world,” Remus says.

“The only one for quite a long time,” Tonks offers. “I haven’t heard of any others, and if they do exist, they must be very far away.”

“I thought perhaps you’d just meant very rare,” Remus says.

“This?” Tonks says, sucking on his teeth before sighing, and flopping onto the other side of the bed. “You really didn’t know.”

“I didn’t,” Remus agrees.

Tonks laughs. “I told you, up front. I said ‘I’m a metamorphmagus’, and you said, rather drunkenly, but definitely as if you understood, that you had a friend who was, as well.”

“As well,” Remus emphasizes. “I didn’t imagine you were literally the only one.”

“I thought you were joking,” Tonks says, running a hand through his hair. “I thought you were teasing. You always enjoyed teasing me, TJ and Nymphadora, just the same.”

“I suppose,” Remus agrees.

“I wasn’t _looking_ for you, you know,” Tonks adds.

Remus rolls over to pull him back into a hug. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I didn’t recognize you, at first, all muggled up, with your hair nice like that,” he says, petting Remus’s hair.

“Are you saying my hair isn’t normally nice?” Remus asks.

“You know it isn’t,” Tonks says. “Anyway, when I did recognize you, that’s when I said, and you were okay with it, and I thought, hey, we’re both adults, our free time is our own.”

“Can’t say fairer than that,” Remus says.

Tonks sighs. “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you didn’t know. I promise, it wasn’t a setup. I didn’t even know you liked blokes. Even if I had, that bar wasn’t exactly the place.”

“No, Molly seemed to think it would scar the children,” Remus says, then mutters, “Arthur seems to think it’ll scar the adults, and forgets to know about it.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a plot or anything,” Tonks says.

“I never thought it was,” Remus agrees.

“Never?” Tonks asks, skeptically, letting his mouth fall into a frown.

“Alright, maybe for a minute, at the beginning,” Remus says, “but I don’t anymore.”

“Why were you all dressed up nicely _there_ , anyway?” Tonks asks.

“Well, it’s sort of a muggle thing, you see,” Remus says, frowning as he thinks of an explanation, “they just sort of…do that. They’re supposed to, because it, um, for cultural –”

“What?” Tonks says, clapping a hand over his mouth and bursting out laughing.

Remus gives him a skeptical look. “It isn’t?”

“It isn’t,” Tonks confirms, “someone was having you on.”

“Oh,” says Remus, with faint consternation. “I suppose they must’ve been.”

“Sorry, love,” Tonks says, resting his head on Remus’s chest. “I bet we can find a decent Muggle Studies textbook, if you’d like to go to a few bookshops this weekend.”


End file.
